


Epitaph

by narsus



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 06:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it he keeps telling himself that it was all justified then eventually he might even believe it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epitaph

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy belongs to John le Carré, StudioCanal and Working Title Films.

It would never have worked, not in the long run: Richard knowing too little and Peter knowing too much. That sort of thing never panned out well for anybody. Even Lady Ann never had all the details and goodness knew that wasn’t for lack of observation on her part. But then she’d never quite cared all that much either. At least that had been the impression Peter always had of her. She saw everything unfolding around her and, just as easily, dismissed it all with a toss of her head. In many ways she was the perfect wife for someone in their situation. A spouse who really didn’t give a damn. Not like Richard. Richard who had cared too much and tried, unsuccessfully, to find solutions for all the problems and objections that Peter couldn’t articulate.

In the end it had been easier that way. Telling Richard not much of anything but allowing him to superimpose his own objections and problems over the fraying tatters of their relationship. Far easier to let Richard do the talking and just sit there, stoically, as the other man walked away. It was such a simple, eloquent, solution that Peter often wondered if he’d even come up with it himself, or if George had suggested it, implanting the idea into the depths of his alcohol-soaked brain. It sounded like something that George would come up with after all. Simple, effective and final. There was no coming back from that silence, from the refusal to beg or plead or barter. Impossible to even think of going back to Richard now with just silence as an explanation.

Afterwards he’d wept, sobbed like a child, trying and failing to hold it all in, like a boy only recently sent away to school. Not that he knew if it that was an accurate comparison. He’d never heard the dry sobs heaving across the dormitories: he’d been a day scholar, spared that particular humiliation. Perhaps though, George had not. There’d been no mistaking his reddened eyes or drawn features the next morning but George had let it pass without comment. It made him wonder how many broken young men George had seen in his lifetime. Perhaps this was normal as far as the other man was concerned. Perhaps this sort of placid pragmatism was why Ann had married George in the first place. It made him wonder if the only difference between the two was that, at least, George pretended to care.

It would have been very easy to blame George for the command. Tie up any loose ends and then go back to subterfuge. Except, when he thought about it, the end had, at least, come with a little dignity this way. With an irrefutable directive, for the cause, for the security of the nation. At least this way there was a noble excuse just as fine as any bullshit at Sarratt. There was a fairytale of silent heroism and duty done that he could cling to. A convenient excuse for the simple guttering out of a failed relationship. Failed because when it came down to it, when it really counted, he didn’t know how to do anything else but be a spy, and not even Richard could pry that scant faith from him. Poor Richard who had never even known that his silent entreaties had been asking Peter to give up his whole self.

Nobody left the Circus in the end. Not really. Not even in death. They were all invariably tied to their function, their place. Even Ricki, who had come back, looking sheepish and muttering about Russians not being his type. Ricki who had looked like a ghost and who snuck off to light votive candles in the nearest church for a single, departed, soul. He’d told Peter once, as if it had meant anything, that he hadn’t loved her. As if Peter could somehow absolve him of that. Peter had bit is tongue to keep from adding that he hadn’t loved Richard either. The both of them, cold and sad and clutching their glasses just a little too tightly. Two spies who’d never loved anyone at all, desperate to believe it and drown the truth in as much alcohol as necessary.

Peter hadn’t gone home with Ricki that night, thought the offer had been clearly there. There’d have been no point in it. They would have fallen against each other in the privacy of Ricki’s flat, trying to pretend that there was nothing to mourn, and there would have been nothing more humiliating than two grown men sobbing on each other’s shoulders about their lost loves at some ridiculous hour of the morning. Ricki, at least, for all his pretension, has completely and utterly obliterated his past with the memory of a dead Russian. It wouldn’t matter now whether or not he’d ever held Peter in any such regard because all that looms large in his memory now is Irina. Beautiful, dead, Irina, lying cold in an unmarked grave.

Peter has no such mythology to call on. Richard is, and will be for the foreseeable future, quite happily among the land of the living. In time, no doubt, he will forget Peter entirely. He will find someone else, with soft eyes and messy hair, who will look up at him tenderly in the hours before the dawn. Perhaps, so Peter likes to tell himself, if only to sooth his ego, Richard’s new love with resemble him, if only superficially. In a moment of drunken whimsy he’ll fantasise that Richard will pause as he holds his young lover in his arms, and look down into his face as if searching for some memory, some ghost, of a man he once adored. It’s stuff and nonsense really. Richard probably has a pretty blond thing who works at a bank now or a dark-haired, cool-eyed young lawyer to keep him content. Perhaps he has both. Perhaps there is a whole procession of young men lining up to sooth a weary schoolmaster’s pain. He tries not to think of what Richard might truly say of him but it’s hard to blot out the bitter voice in his head that suggests, quite reasonably, that Richard might have a less than glowing opinion of the trollop he once went to bed with.

Peter has been called worse before but the very idea of kind, gentle, Richard saying such things eats away at him. Not that he has any excuse. He has been worse and really, he can hardly make any argument against it, not when he has been little more than George’s whore all along. His only consolation being that at least he was never Bill Haydon’s. Not in any sense of the word. Which is scant integrity at the end of the day. He has sold himself, body and soul, and it was all a very long time ago so there’s little reason to be mourning the matter now. A few tears, followed by a little bit more to drink, and even that is an indulgence. He is, after all, a very good whore by anyone’s estimation. It is all he knows how to be, all he is fit for, which is hardly a new proposition. He is well paid and well kept. There is no reason for him to complain of anything. No reason whatsoever to bewail his lot. He is not fit for happiness anyway. That is the providence of other people. Men and women who work honest jobs for honest pay. Who didn’t learn to kill or lie or cheat in their nursery.

All spies are running from something, buried deep down in their psyches, something that separates them from everything else. As if they have tumbled down into the darkness and never quite made it out again. Peter hasn’t, certainly. It’s why he is head of his section. He’s not capable of any other function and he has long ago made his peace with that. Richard was merely a mistake, one that he has since corrected. The tears that choke him when he remembers that are merely self-indulgent melodrama.


End file.
